AOL to drop Digg-like news from Netscape

Little over a year ago, AOL revamped its Netscape.com portal as a social news site, aiming to tap into the popularity of sites like Digg, where users vote for the most “interesting and relevant” stories to be prominently displayed on the front page. Failing to even come close to Digg’s success (at least visit-wise), Netscape.com will revert to a traditional editorially driven news site. In a blog post, Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote:

“We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn't expect to find it on Netscape.com”AOL is not abandoning the Digg-like site altogether, though. The company plans to launch a separate social news site "in the very near future”. For the moment, the social news site is still available at the Netscape.com, but users can preview the portal site that is set to replace it at netscape.aol.com.